National Pollinator Week

Who knew?

June 17th to 23rd is National Pollinator Week. This is the first time I've come across this week of commemoration and by coincidence, it fit in with a few new books I had selected to blog about, focused on bees. Here are some suggestions for elementary grades:  


Bee: a peek-through picture book by Britta Teckentrup
This one is for young bees with a gently rhyming text and die-cut illustrations showing exactly how a bee goes about its business. This one is for the primary grades.








Bee Dance by Rick Chrustowski
This focuses on the way bees communicate to each other about where to find good sources of flowers. Basic expository test clearly explains this process making it accessible for the primary grades. Lovely, bright illustrations are very inviting.

The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall and Isabelle Arsenault
Whereas the first two books really focused on the collection of pollen and communicating the source of food between bees, The Honeybee goes a bit further.  Additional  information (in rhyme) explains what happens when pollen and nectar laden bees go back to the hive and how honey in made. The illustrations are more fanciful and less anatomically correct then the first two books. Another one for the early grades.





The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner

Of the four books, this one has the most information about all things pertaining to bees such as various kinds of bee, anatomy, activities in the hive, seasonal activities, pollination, swarming, communication, importance of bees and the threats that bees are currently exposed to. The text is typically broken into small chunks so as to not overwhelm the reader. I like the illustrations for being fairly simplistic. A good book for report writing for grades 3 to 6.


There seems to be many books written about bees recently making it pretty easy to find one for studying bees, insects, interconnectedness between species and environmental issues. 

Soooo easy to bee-in-the-know, isn't it?

Inspirational Photos Instilling Wonder While Teaching

In looking closely at the three books I’m blogging about today, I realized that there was a connection between them going beyond the fact that these are all coffee table books filled with beautiful photographs. The connection is that these beautiful books engage our imaginations, opening up the worlds they present to us, provoking questions, instilling wonder and informing us, along the way.

First up is a book published by National Geographic, Stunning Photographs compiled by Annie Griffiths. As soon as I mention National Geographic, you’re assured that this book will not disappoint. Divided into six sections, Mystery, Harmony, Wit, Discovery, Energy and Intimacy, the photos in each embody some sense of the section’s title. I especially enjoyed the section, Wit as there was a great deal of humour and playful tweaking of our perceptions in these pictures. Really lots of fun. There are hundreds of pictures in this book, created from every corner of the world, I’m sure, and that will amaze viewers of any age.

My next recommendation is, Microsculpture: Portraits of Insects by Levon Biss.  I adore macro photography and this book is fantastic. Using preserved insect specimens from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History collection, Biss takes thousands of pictures of each insect and its parts and then reconstitutes them to give the viewer an amazing close-up. We get to see every pockmark, scale, whisker, hair, and ridge, plus an array of beautiful colours and shapes of 36 insects from various parts of the world. Each insect is given a short descriptive paragraph often discussing some weird feature and the importance of this particular adaptation. There are some amazingly bizarre looking creatures out there. When thinking about the number of science fiction and fantasy movies  that incorporate ‘out-of-this-world’ looking creatures, designers need go no further than Earth’s own insect population for inspiration.

My last selection is Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad by Jeanine Michna-Bales. This photographer recreated a 1400-mile journey, from Louisiana to Ontario that slaves may have taken when trying to escape to freedom. Based on her research, she went looking to document some of the areas that slaves and sometimes, those helping slaves escape, would have passed through but also convey the sense of what it might have been like traveling, mostly at night, through unknown landscapes, living in fear of being recaptured.  The photographs are not necessarily the most interesting as they’re often murky and show deeply shadowed forests, meadows, and wetlands. But taken in context of a fugitive running for their life, the book does convey the danger, fear, and beauty that might have been experienced. The accompanying essays also provide a lot of interesting information about the Underground Railroad. This book will be most effective in the classroom that is already studying American slavery and the Underground Railroad and would be an interesting companion book to novels such as Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker, Crossing to Freedom by Virginia Frances Schwartz, and A Desperate Road to Freedom by Karleen Bradford.

I recommend all three of these books for all ages.

Food for thought

A couple of recent additions to the Doucette Library’s collection made me realize the number of books that are in the library relating food to social issues and current events.  What a great way to explore contemporary issues and something we can all relate to in an interdisciplinary way, if we wanted to.

Below I’ve created a list and grouped books according to what they focus on.  Click on the titles of the books to go to the library’s catalogue to read a short summary about the exact content.

  

Global Food Issues (such as access, international trade, etc.)

-Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World’s Favorite Treat by Kay Frydenborg (Gr.6-10)

 -Down to Earth: How Kids Help Feed the World by Nutritional Issues (Gr.3-6)

Sugar Changed the World: a Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science by Marc Aronson (Gr.4-7)

Growing Food (eg. where does it come from)

-Before We Eat: From Farm to Table by Pat Brisson (Gr.K-2)

-Eat Up!: an Infographic Exploration of Food by Antonia Banyard (Gr. 4-7)

-The Children's Garden: Growing Food in the City by Carole Schaefer (Gr.K-2)

-Potatoes on Roof tops: Farming in the City by Hadley Dyer (Gr.4-8)

History and Culture

-Fifty Foods that Changed the Course of History by Bill Price (Gr.10 and up)

-Footprints: the Story of What We Eat by Paula Ayer (Gr. 6 and up)

-Man Eating Bugs: the Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel (Gr.8 and up)

 -What's for Lunch?: How Schoolchildren Eat Around the World by Andrea Curtis (Gr.3-6)

-What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets by Peter Menzel (Gr.8 and up)

Issues and Events we hear about in the news (organic foods, eating locally produced food)

-Eating Local by Laura Perdew (Gr.4-7)

 -Meatless?: a Fresh Look at What We Eat by Sarah Elton (Gr.3-7)

-Hijacked: How Your Brain is Fooled by Food by David Kessler (Gr.7 and up)

-The Dorito Effect: the Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor by Mark Schatzker (Gr.10 and up)

These books become an interesting way to discuss health issues, current events, science, history. Tie these books to some of the kits also available in the Doucette Library like the "How Much Fat?" kits that looks at the quantity of fat found in common foods, "How Much Sugar?" kit, also showing us in a very visual way how much sugar we consume. There's great potential for developing an interdisciplinary unit about a subject that is relevant and important for all of us.

Terrific math concept book

I’m loving How Much Does a Ladybug Weigh?by Alison Limentani.

This is a picture book for the primary grades best used in math lessons about measurement, size, counting and even patterns, to some extent.

Based on the weight of an average healthy animal, each set of pages leads us from a small animal to a slightly larger one, comparing how many of the smaller animals it takes to weigh the same as the larger animal.  For example 10 ants weigh the same as 1 ladybug. Nine ladybugs weigh the same as 1 grasshopper. Eight grasshoppers weigh the same as 1 stickleback fish. And so on until the author circles back to comparing the weight of 1 swan to 362,880 ladybugs.

The countdown has been cleverly executed and I imagine it took some research to find the animals to fit within this pattern. The end pages tell us the weights of each creature so that we too can do our own calculations. The one down side is the weights are only in imperial units and not metric.

The illustrations are attractive with bold colours and lino cut prints.

I recommend checking it out.

More divergent thinking

Most of you will know how excited I get with books that offer a different spin on their topics or in how they present their material aka divergent thinking. I facilitated a workshop last October with students about the range of resources available, different types found in fiction and nonfiction and with their assistance created a Pinterest board listing some of their recommendations for books with divergent thinking characteristics. (See also blog from October.)

So today I’m recommending two more books that I think also showcase qualities of divergent thinking.

First up is I’m Trying to Love Spiders by Bethany Barton. No super surprising twist about the topic in this book.  Yup, it’s about spiders. As the author explains she’s trying very, very, very hard to learn to ‘love’ them which is hard work and taking a toll on the spider population. But by learning more about spiders, their characteristics and what they’re good at (mostly eating lots of other insects) the author does eventually come to better appreciate them.  Next up, learning to love cockroaches.

Both the illustrations and font type-face add to the book’s humour. Unless you’re already comfortable around spiders the book is easy to relate to. I, too, can appreciate qualities of spiders but its best if they stay out in the garden. I will try the catch-and-release approach to those that do take up residence in the house but once they reach a size of large proportions (Yes, I’m thinking of you dearly departed ginormous cane spider in Hawaii) I just kind of lose it.

So we have information, humour, and relatability to draw us in and engage our interest.  I’d recommend this for early elementary grades and see it tying in to the Alberta Education science curriculum for grade 2.

A Nest is Noisy by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long is my next recommendation.

This is part of a series that I think is brilliant. Here are the other titles:

An Egg is Quiet

A Butterfly is Patient

A Rock is Lively

A Seed in Sleepy

All of these take a phenomenon from nature and give it an attribute you wouldn’t necessarily connect to that particular natural occurrence. I particularly like A Rock is Lively as you don’t think about a rock as being all that lively – for most of us they’re pretty static. Check out the book to find out more.  And what a great activity to have students model their own work by matching atypical attributes to nature’s wonders.

In A Nest is Noisy we’re introduced (or reminded) about various animals who build nests, mostly egg laying creatures such as birds, fish, and insects but also prairie dogs, primates and squirrels who do not lay eggs. So how are nests noisy? They’re filled with the busy-ness and the getting-on-with of life of rearing the young. The range of construction materials is fascinating including everything from typical twigs, leaves and grasses to mud, bubbles, and saliva. Army ants use their own bodies to create bivouacs or ‘living nests’.  Besides trees, nests are found in water, underground, in sand and shallow, rocky streambeds. The illustrations are beautifully rendered in watercolour with lots of attention to detail but typically displayed on single coloured backgrounds to highlight the nests and animals.

I recommend all of Aston's and Long's books across the elementary level in science (animals, building materials, sound), language arts and art.

Coffee table books round up

Even though I haven’t been blogging very much in the past few weeks rest assured that I’m always busy reading or at least looking at books with lots of pictures.

Thus today’s topic – coffee table picture books.

I’m a big proponent of these books as the best of them are typically, beautifully produced, informative and often give us mini-narratives about the photographer’s work, adventures and views on a given topic.

Let’s start with Dawn to Dark Photographs: the Magic of Light by National Geographic.  I can’t think of a single National Geographic book that has ever disappointed me.  Always stunningly beautiful photographs arrayed in thoughtfully produced books.

In Dawn to Dark Photographs, the photographs are sorted into eight sections based on time of day starting with dawn, then into sunrise, morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, twilight and then night.  Most of the photos are of landscapes and specific natural phenomena with a few showing people or animals.  In terms of classroom use, I was thinking about the obvious connections with the elementary science units about light and shadows, time, animals, as well as with photography as an art form for any level.  What I hadn't thought about was the meditative quality of the book.  Jim Richardson in the preface reminds us that photographs can resemble medieval meditations (think illuminated texts like the Book of Hours) as we pause to look and reflect on “the miracle of light and appreciate its infinite and astonishing variety”.  Every few pages we get a short passage written by the photographers about their picture: what they saw and experienced and maybe tried to capture in their image.  Or we are given a short poem, quote or thought that ties into the adjacent photo. 

India: In Word & Image by Eric Meola obviously connects to the grade 3 social studies curriculum which looks at life in India.  What totally blew me away was the overwhelming sense of colour.  Even before getting to the title page our eyes are bombarded with achingly vibrant colours.  Besides being richly coloured, the photographs capture the exotic and textured landscapes and architecture of India.  Images of people are captured individually or in groups in moments of celebration and everyday activities.  I’m not sure if it’s just me being caught up with the myriad of patterns and colours of saris or the photographer’s keen interest, as many of the pictures depict sari-clad women.

The photographs are anchored between passages, often selections taken from novels, written by authors who are Indian, of Indian descent, or who write about India.  The passages are appropriate for high school level and up but the pictures will engross any age.

And, finally I’m recommending Relics: Travels in Nature’s Time Machine by Piotr Naskrecki. This one has more text than the other two making it appropriate for high school reading level and up or perhaps for students who are super keen on palaeontology and willing to make the effort.  I didn't find the information difficult to digest; it just seemed a little dense and might be intimidating to less-than-proficient readers.  However, Naskrecki does include lots of vignettes of his adventures, which read like little mini-stories and he certainly conveys his passion and excitement.

But it's the great pictures that will get students into the book.

This entomologist is also a fantastic photographer who travels the world looking for animal and plant relics found in nature.  “Living fossils”, relicts and relics all refer to those species of plants and animals that can be linked to similar organisms in the fossil record.  These are modern plants and animals that can provide insight into genetics, habitats, adaptations and behaviours of ancient species.  Some of these include horseshoe crabs, legless lizards, various tree frogs, toads, caterpillars, ferns and fern-ish looking trees known as cycads, magnolias and so many more.

One critter of particular interest is found in the Rocky Mountains close to Calgary.  Ice crawlers are insects that live in ice caves or on northern talus slopes up to about 3,000 meters, who like it cold but not too cold (0 to -9 degrees Celsius).  You can kill an ice crawler by merely touching it because of our warm body temperatures. Very cool little critters.  Again and again, I flip through pages and see yet another fascinating animal and another and another…

Classroom connections again would lean to environmental science, art and language arts.

Round up of science picture books

I’ve been busy reading of late and have three pictures books to recommend.

Bone by bone: comparing animal skeletons by Sara Levine is a terrific information book that engages readers with questions about what kind of animal they would be if --- [insert a specific bone size or specialization here]?  

For example,

What if you didn't have any arm or leg bones? What kind of animal would you be if you had just a skull, vertebrae and ribs?

     [turn the page] and…

There you are as a snake.

AND

What kind of animal would you be if your finger bones grew so long that they reached your feet?

       [turn the page] and…

Now you have an arm with a bat wing.

It’s a fun exploration of skeletons, exploring similarities and differences, vertebrates and invertebrates.

Flight of the Honey Bee by Raymond Huber highlights the importance of the honey bee for pollinating plants, resulting in seed and fruit production.   This picture book looks at the life of a scout, a specialized bee within a hive that hunts for flowers.  She’s a skilled navigator and will communicate with her sister bees the location of good sources of pollen and nectar.  During her search she escapes a hungry bird, sits out a rain storm and fights off the attack of a yellow-jacket on her hive.  There is so much information packed into this engaging book with its brightly coloured illustrations adding vibrancy to these creatures’ busy lives, it will be impossible to not to learn something.

My last recommendation is Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table by Jacqueline Briggs Martin.  Will Allen is a real person with a mission to teach people the importance of good food and how to grow it for ourselves.  As a child, he took for granted the plentiful food his mother put on the table every night.  As a young man, he had no desire to continue the ‘farming’ traditions of his family and turned to professional basketball instead.  But a chance occurrence helping a friend dig up potatoes, reawakened his desire to grow his own food.  He felt that everyone, everywhere had a right to good food.   But what to do for those folks living in the city?

Will Allen had a vision and with lots of hard work, a steep learning curve and lots of help he turned empty, unproductive city lots into mini-urban farms.  His ‘table’ continues to grow by teaching people how to grow food in healthy ways.  The book ends with a letter from Will Allen encouraging readers to grow their own fruits and vegetables in whatever space available, whether it’s in pots on a balcony or in a backyard.

All books will work well in the elementary grades.

Reflecting on nature

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost and Rick Lieder  is a quiet meditation about observing the small wonders to be found in nature.  By quietly watching an array of insects such as crickets, moths, praying mantis, bees and others on a blade of grass or flower, the reader is drawn into a beautiful world of creatures captured in a single moment that gives us the opportunity to observe them. 

This book does not embrace the drama of Bug Shots: the Good, the Bad and the Bugly by Alexander Siy.  Gotta love this opening paragraph:

"Bugs bite.  Some drink blood.  Bugs rob.  They steal food from gardens and fields.  Bugs kill -- mostly each other, but also plants, animals, even people sometimes.  Bugs destroy.

They eat houses, clothes, and furniture.  Bugs bug."

Glorious, photographic close-ups of the insects display their beauty, complimenting the accompanying, elegant poem.  There is an easing of the  day into night then into early morning.  The photo of a dew laden spider web lit with the rising sun is stunning.

All the insects are identified with a bit of information about their characteristics and habits at the back of the book.

I don’t have a lot to say about this book except that you won’t be disappointed when you spend some quiet moments with it.  Then go outside to see what you can see and savor.

For us snowbound people, you’ll have to wait until next spring to watch for insects, but you might want to consider what happens to insects during the winter with Bugs & Bugsicles: Insects In the Winter by Amy Hansen. Connecting to nature in winter is different but not impossible. 

Enjoy.

Interesting patterns

Before & after: a book of nature timescapes by Jan Thornhill (577.5 ThB 2005 PIC BK) is an interesting resource if you’re looking for an unusual science book that combines measures of time, observation skills, and nature.

The author has selected seven types of environments from different parts of the world (coral reef, savannah, Australian forest, tropical rainforest, wetland, meadow, and school yard) and shows how each changes with varying shifts in time. 

For example, the first set of pages shows a brightly coloured and highly detailed ‘snapshot’ of a coral reef.  There are many species of tropical fish, various types of coral, starfish, octopus, sea urchin, etc.  This is the ‘before’ shot.  Turn the page and we see what the same location would look like ‘after’ a few seconds.  Pretty much everything has moved except the coral, as you would expect. 

A little further on in the book, we look at a wetland at dusk.  Again, many animals, birds, insects, reptiles, fish, plants, etc. are depicted going about their lives as night is about to fall.  Turn the page and the scene is an hour later.  We see a pair of moose and group of raccoons that had not been visible in the preceding illustration and the heron that had been predominant in the ‘before’ illustration is now gone.

The last set of illustrations show a schoolyard that is about to undergo a transformation from barren yard to a vegetable-producing, bird-attracting, insect-laden garden as cultivated over the span of a year.

Each duo of pages is framed with the creatures that are, or will be, in attendance in the next set of pages, providing kids the opportunity to identity the wildlife and see what changes occur over a specific period of time.

Though young children ages 5 and 6 will enjoy looking at illustrations, I think kids even up to grade 5 will take pleasure in identifying changes between ‘before’ and ‘after’ in these timescapes.

Today is Nonfiction Monday hosted at Wrapped In Foil.  This is a weekly roundup of children's literature that is focused on nonfiction children's literature.  Well worth a look.  

Ewww! Yuck! --- Let me see that!

Don’t ever underestimate the gross factor as a way to get kids interested and engaged in a topic.

The following resources have potential for grossing out and attracting at the same time.  Funny how a lot of them relate to bodily functions, isn’t it?

Enjoy!

Nonfiction books and kits (for elementary and middle school)
*Animal scat identification kit (599 AN 2008 A/V)

*Black spider puppet (791.53 SP 2005 A/V)

*Bug science: 20 projects and experiments about arthropods : insects, arachnids, algae, worms, and other small creatures (595 YOB 2009)

*Left for dead: a young man's search for justice for the USS Indianapolis (940.545973 NEL 2002) (suggested for grades 9 and up)

*Man eating bugs: the art and science of eating insects (394.1 MEM 1998)

*Oh, rats!: the story of rats and people (599.352 MAO 2006)

*Ouch!: how your body makes it through a very bad day (612 WAO 2007)

*Poop: a natural history of the unmentionable (573.49 DAP 2004)

*Qwiggle-gel brain mold (612.82 QW 2005 A/V)

*Rear ends: found photos from the collection of Roger Handy (779 RE 2007)

*Snake (597.96 MAS 2006)

*Sneeze! (612.2 SIS 2007)

*What stinks? (573.877 SIW 2006)

*What's eating you?: parasites--the inside story (578.65 DAW 2007)

*What's living in your classroom? (579 SOW 2004)

Picture books

*Big Al (823 C591B PIC BK)

*I stink! (823 M229I PIC BK)

*Mucky moose (823 AL533M PIC BK)

*What's that awful smell? (823 T236W PIC BK)